


A Caged Beast

by brutallyamish



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Imprisonment, Insanity, Other, Post-Film
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-04
Updated: 2012-10-04
Packaged: 2017-11-15 15:24:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/528722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brutallyamish/pseuds/brutallyamish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"<i>Trapped inside, the once-brilliant Prince had truly gone mad. With his silence dually enforced and left to the torment of his own mind, the man had paved his own descent into insanity. </i>"</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Caged Beast

Pale, tired eyes gaze in. Long ago the shock had faded, they no longer trembled, or misted. They seemed just tired now, simply exhausted. It had been some time since they had first seen the horror locked tightly away, and they had many other things to look upon, beautiful things, things full of life that reflected more than terrifying insanity and hatred back to him. 

Concern had failed. Kindness meant nothing. Love had not swayed. 

Those eyes look for only a few moments before they depart again. The mouth they belonged to asked soft, quiet questions and received brusque, non-committal answers. The ones who answered had little care for the relics stored away and had nothing to report that eyes couldn’t see. Nothing had moved. Nothing ever moves down here. It is all silent as the grave. It would unnerve any lesser man, but they had seen many horrible things. But those pale eyes had seen birth of the monstrosity walled away behind them. 

Eyes peered in again. Blood stained the white-washed marble, never cleaned, darkening with age. He had been unable to see the act, and still could not comprehend the butchery that had occurred behind the seal. The sounds of voices down here always drew faded eyes toward the sound, but there was no hint of recognition in them. They were dark and feral, predatory and manic and saw nothing anymore. They would dart around the cell, but this day, they caught the eyes peering in and held them fiercely. 

Accusation screamed from their depths and for once in many, many years, there was movement inside the marble room. Frantic and terrifying movements, but never sound. There is never any sound. Pale eyes look away and the movement vanishes from view. They leave the tomb and do not return for weeks, not until called by the watchmen.

The King, busy with matters of more importance, ignores the summons, and doesn’t admit to himself or others that the refusal is more for his sanity and to ease his own guilt than for truly being otherwise occupied. His wife and the regent speak in hushed whispers about the stories drifting through the halls, young children share stories of a beast locked away in the cellar that even their father king fears. The pale eyes are the eyes of the King, and they want to see nothing but the soft fingers of light that are captured by the gilded walls.

If only he had the mercy to have killed it, the beast in the bowels of his palace. Its silence roared in his dreams, the blood it spilt in its chambers choked him in his nightmares.  


The King relents finally, when his dear Queen begs of him to see if the tales were true. His lady Mother turns her eyes away and says nothing, her grieving heart still struggling with the loss of her dear family. She has never seen the chamber and never shall. 

The hall that leads to the tomb is long and silent and cuts deep into the heart of the palace, travelling down and further than the eye can see and light can illuminate. He carries with him a torch which is taken by a bowed watchman as another steps aside from the passage that leads deeper still. 

Marble walls, once immaculate and beautiful were stained red and brown, no white left when there had been much open canvas the last time the King’s pale eyes had seen them. Inside, a pale beast paced. The King rests a hand against the wall and the beast’s eyes turn. All the grace it once possessed could not mask the insanity that plagued it. It clawed furiously at the walls, nails long gone and bleeding, many of the digits clearly broken, healed and broken again, hinging at strange angles. It slams its battered fists, but not even a vibration escapes its prison. 

When eyes lock again, fear emerges in the creature’s eyes and it reels back, huddled in a corner darker than all the others, leaking green eyes staring back from a gaunt, pale face. The King watches with a heavy heart, knowing he had chosen this, thinking it some mercy, when, truly, he had damned his brother. The caged beast inside that cell was nothing of the mad Prince he had returned home. The stories of the mad Prince had died with his lord Father, leaving a burden only the King and his Mother bore. 

For the first time in centuries, the King cried. 

 

Sometimes, the King had glimpses of the Prince he had once called brother, a person he had loved most dearly. They were more frequent many moons ago, when he could look in and feel the seething hatred mingle with broken pride and a silent -ever silent- plea for escape. The old king’s justice was swift and blind. The mad Prince was near unforgivable, yet his brother begged on his behalf. The former had remained silent, long after the gag had been removed.  


A silver tongue was to be taken and exile enforced. But where could they send the poor, mad, silenced Prince? A placement on the realm he had destroyed would certainly lead him to an early grave, and what repentance would that be? That was when the room was suggested. Sealed away, he would be incapable of harm to anyone, or so the King had thought. Tightly sequestered, he could remain whole and silent as he served for his crimes. The old king relented, and so it was to pass. The King was horrified when the marble prison was christened with the blood from the mouth of the mad Prince and sealed shut before the King could act.  


And sealed it has been for what seems to have been forever.

Trapped inside, the once-brilliant Prince had truly gone mad. With his silence dually enforced and left to the torment of his own mind, the man had paved his own descent into insanity. For a while, observers could witness a war inside the chamber, pale, nearly translucent skin fighting with blue, emerald with ruby, monstrosity with fear. The King had thought this was reflection, unable or unwilling to understand what was truly happening inside. When the war was over, there were tears and erratic movements, the prisoner constantly at the only wall that could be seen through, begging forgiveness with cracking green eyes. The King had been unable to visit during this period, heart weary and mind burdened. When he finally was able, the phase had passed to be replaced by desperation and a paranoid racing through the cage, constantly twisting and fearing what never appeared over his shoulder. The violence started not long after. The clawing at the walls, the floor left no scratches in the pristine marble, but tore nails from their beds. When the tearing didn’t work, there came the thrashing, which resulted in broken fingers and shoulders and toes. Eventually, after what felt like an eternity of this torture, the King saw his prisoner fade into the static state he had been in until recently. The King felt that the staticness was the most terrifying. The Prince seemed not to acknowledge the real world, trapped inside both his body and his cell. His green eyes were dead and lifeless and never shifted from its blank stare. 

Something had woken the beast, something in the King had brought some of his old brother back, but not nearly enough. There was still more madness in him than the King could handle. He watched with sad blue eyes as the beast crawled from its hiding spot to the seemingly glass barrier. There was strangely sane intention in the way he stood, jade eyes moving to hold azure. The King had felt his breath catch in his throat, thinking that perhaps his brother had been returned to him, but the beast seemed to roar, mangled mouth gaping open as crooked fingers -once delicate and beautiful- rended skin from his face. The King ripped his eyes away, stumbling blindly backwards into a wall. Glancing back again, the beast seemed to laugh and crumbled back to the floor, slinking, bloody, back to its corner. The King knew it watched as he ran.

 

From that day on, the King was present without fail, and remained as long as he could stomach it. He was terrified of the man inside the cell, of the hold he seemed to have on his heart. His beast seemed vengeful, but knowing that it could not get at the King, it was breaking itself. There was not a day that passed where the King did not witness his beast perform some atrocity upon himself. One evening, it presented him with one of his green eyes, ripped from its socket and nested in his bloody palm carefully. He left it by the glass, and the King always felt its stare, even in his sleep.

It was on the day the mangled body of his Prince stood before him, tears flowing from his one good eye, that the King had finally lost his own mind. The tearing of flesh and spilling of blood had not pulled at his heartstrings as this honest sorrow, the most present his brother has been since his imprisonment. 

The cell was meant to be impenetrable, but nothing could stop the King when the magically forged steel of his weapon, a true extension of his own arm, reflected his own desperate need to tear through the glass wall to reach the inner chamber. The Prince had cowered away in abstract fear at the sight of the Hammer, backing itself as far into a corner and into itself as it could manage. 

The smell of rotting blood filled the King’s nose, the sounds of ragged and frantic breathing the loudest sounds he had ever heard. The broken wall cracked and crumbled underfoot and the noises, novel after so long, attracted the Prince’s attention. He lashed out, fingers reaching the King’s face, and the King could feel that under the caked blood, the bone has been exposed. The feeling of it against his skin nearly caused bile to rise in his throat. The fingers touched gingerly at first, but soon began to dig in painfully, reaching into the King as if searching for something. The King grabbed the Prince’s wrists, feeling the bones crunch and grind together. 

The hands wrapped tightly around his wrists must have reminded him of shackles and the Prince thrashed. The strong grip was unrelenting and as a terrible consequence, the brittle, age-worn bones snapped from the terrified flailing. The King released the wrists reflexively, looking down at the Prince who was surveying his arms with his only good eye and it seemed more afraid than ever. 

The King reached his hands out again, his fingers finding the nape of his once brother’s neck. The broken Prince seemed to remember this gesture and raised his eye. Tears flowed again. The King embraced his brother closely then, overcome with the sorrow he had forced himself not to feel.

What could he do for his brother now? His prison had turned him into something even the King couldn’t save. He could no longer fix this, there was no way to take back centuries of torture, given unknowingly but performed unerringly. He cradled the broken body in his arms for what felt like forever. The King could feel himself sobbing, the reverberations echoing throughout his brother. When he pulled back, he searched that green eye for something, anything, some form of recognition. One hand found the back of that pale neck, the other found its way through long, unkempt black hair. The king tried to ignore that he could see blood on his fingers from the patches from where handfuls had recently been torn, instead burying them in what was left of it, finally cradling the base of his skull.

The King edged them to the floor, carefully placing his brother down as if afraid of shattering him. There was no fear in the green eye, as if the Prince knew what was happening. Outstretching his hand, the weapon that was the extension of his arm nestled into his palm. He raised his arm as tears fell from his eyes.

“I have, and forever will, love you, my brother.”


End file.
